should have killed you when I had the chance,’ said Frey. There was no rancour in it; it was simply an observation. ‘I suppose this is where mercy gets you.’
Trinica gave him a dry smile. ‘Consider this the price of a lesson well learned.’
Frey and Trinica gazed at each other across the dusty gap that separated them. The huge silence of the Blackendraft filled the moment.
He couldn’t feel hate for her. He couldn’t manage to feel much more than a distant disappointment. This felt right, somehow. It had been greed that made him jump at Quail’s too-good-to-be-true offer. And while he didn’t blame himself for the many deaths aboard the Ace of Skulls - they were doomed with or without him - he’d played a part in it. He might have saved the Archduke and done a great service to his country, but he did it by initiating a massacre at Retribution Falls. It didn’t seem fair that he should profit from his own stupidity, at the expense of all those lives.
Maybe he owed the world something. For the crew he’d taken into Samarla and left to die. For every Trinica Dracken and Amalicia Thade whom he’d discarded and forgotten as soon as they showed signs of wanting more than he was prepared to give.
For his baby, that died for its parents’ cowardice.
He’d condemned them all when he agreed to take on the Ace of Skulls. But since then, he’d clawed back all he’d lost, and more besides. He’d forged a crew, and he’d reclaimed himself. Perhaps that was all that was needed, in the end.
‘What happens now, Trinica?’ he asked her.
‘I expect Grephen will hang,’ she said. ‘The Awakeners . . . well, they’re too powerful to be brought down, even by this. But I think the Archduke will redouble his efforts to cripple them from now on.’
‘I mean, what happens to us?’
Trinica gave him a bewildered look. ‘How would I know? I expect you’ll get your pardons, even if you’re not there to collect them.’
‘You’re letting us go?’
‘Of course I am,’ she said. ‘Everyone who put a bounty on your head has either withdrawn it or is in no position to pay any more. Why would I want you?’
His crew visibly relaxed. Frey brushed away a lock of hair that was blowing across his forehead.
‘And you?’ he asked.
‘I’ll be heading off somewhere,’ she replied, nonchalant. ‘I suppose I’ll have to keep out of the Navy’s way from now on, but I’ll survive.’
She motioned to her bosun, who filled a leather bag with coins from the chest. He tied it with a thin piece of rope and gave it to her. It was almost too big to hold in one hand. She weighed it thoughtfully, then hefted it towards Frey, who barely caught it.
‘Finder’s fee,’ she said. ‘That, and you can keep your craft.’
‘That’s uncommonly merciful of you, Trinica.’
She smiled, and this time it wasn’t the chilly, guarded smile he’d come to know. It was the smile of the old Trinica, from a time before her world had become full of horrors, and it flooded him with a bittersweet warmth.
‘I’m feeling sentimental,’ she said. ‘Goodbye, Captain.’
She turned her back on them then, and walked towards the shuttle that sat a short way distant. Her men closed the chest and gathered it up.
